Friday, June 25, 2010

... [T]he weekend almost certainly belongs again to Toy Story 3. Pixar’s latest opened to a record for the studio, at just a little over $110 million, and is showing no signs of stopping mid-week. ... It should get to at least $200 million by the end of this weekend with a $68 million effort.

Only two other holdovers have a chance to put up significant numbers; The Karate Kid and The A-Team both put up as strong of numbers as you would expect for their second weekends, at $30 million and $14 million apiece ...

1) Toy Story 3 -- 68.3 miilion

2) Grown Ups -- 46.9 million

3) Knight and Day -- 34.6 million

4) The Karate Kid -- 17.5 million

5) The A-Team -- 8.1 million

Meanwhile, a few notches down, Shrek Forever Afterclicks along. Through Thursday, the ogre has collected $226.4 million domestic dollars.

(CNBC's rundown of top-grossing animated films -- no doubt cribbed from B.O. Mojo -- can be found here. But they have a nice set of factoids for each feature.)

Sony's ensemble comedy "Grown Ups" rung up an estimated $14.5 million in domestic boxoffice on Friday to kick off a likely $40 million-plus opening weekend. ...

Disney's 3D threequel "Toy Story 3" is virtually guaranteed to repeat at No. 1 in its sophomore session after fetching $18 million on Friday and topping the daily rankings. The Pixar-produced pic totes $175.5 million in cumulative boxoffice through its first eight days ...

... Toy Story 3 tops the North American box office for the 2nd straight week, recording the highest second weekend ever for Disney/Pixar. It's also the second fastest Disney film to pass $200 million domestic box office -- 9 days, compared to Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest's 8 days. Thanks to higher 3D ticket prices and a wide release into 4,028 theaters, the toon with massive appeal did $18.0M Friday and $22.6M Saturday and an estimated $18.4M for Sunday. ...

And at the wire, we find Grown Ups in second place, Knight and Day in third, and Shrek Forever After in the 7th position, with $229.3 million in the haversack.

I vaguely remember my old man telling me that the vultures in JB were patterned after the Beatles (it's pretty obvious), but then there's that strange, barbershop quartet-style singing, which has got nothing to do with the Fab Four.

I had never heard that the Beatles were approached, but it's certainly possible. The film would have been in development at the time the Beatles hit American shores.

Also, Fantasia and 101D still in the Top 3?Good, yes, but weren't they (and Lion King) originally thrown off by Disney's brief creative-accounting loophole in the early 90's, where they pasted VHS sales figures into the year's re-release grosses to inflate the cumulative numbers?

(They got away with it for years, until columns started wondering about their claim that "Fantasia had outgrossed Terminator 2" that summer.)

@Anonymous#4:Floyd Norman is a 'he'. Hpefully, yu already knew that and it was just a spelling mstake.

@Anonymous#2 &@Steve: From what i've heard the Beatles were considered for the role but Walt Disney rejected the idea since he didn't thought their popularity and appeal would last and wouldn't want one of his films to feel outdated by future generations.

I also heard about the John-Lenon-vetoing story which is included as a trivia on the trivia section of the film's imdb.com's entry.

Isn't there anything about this on the Platinum edition of The Jugle Bok?

Sounds like a manufactured fact, perhaps descended from "the Beatles didn't want to do Yellow Submarine."

There's a Sherman brother interview where he acknowledges the Beatles influence but never says they were ever contacted.

Wikipedia cites Michael Barrier as the source for an assertion that Stokowski assembled a pick-up orchestra of 100 musicians in L.A. to record "Sorcerer"... at no cost to Disney! Musicians must have been as cheap as animators back then.

The thoughts and observations of the leaders of The Animation Guild (TAG), Local 839 IATSE. Jason MacLeod is the Business Representative, KC Johnson is the President. Mike Sauer is Assistant to the Business Representative.

This weblog reflects their individual personal opinions and does not necessarily represent the official position of the Animation Guild.

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